Pew

How to spell pew

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pew

What does pew mean?

1. nounA long wooden bench with a back, used for seating in a church.

Pew in a sentence

• The congregation filed into each pew before the service began.

• A small brass plate on the pew named the family who once rented it.

Where does pew come from?

Language of origin: French

Pew came into English in the 1300s from the Old French word 'puie', which meant a raised place, a balcony, or a railed platform. That French word traces back to the Latin 'podia', the plural of 'podium', meaning a raised stand or elevated seat, the same root that gives us the modern English 'podium'. In its earliest English use a pew was an enclosed, raised seat reserved for an important family or official in a church, often boxed in and rented. Over the centuries the meaning broadened and settled on the long, fixed wooden benches that fill the body of a church today. The spelling looks odd for such a short word because it preserves that French 'pu' opening rather than spelling it phonetically, which is exactly why writers sometimes hesitate over it.

How the word is built

• pew (single root, from Old French puie: raised platform or balcony rail)